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We must do a better job of predicting and preempting future Fergusons: Phillip Morris

Ferguson Monday night protests

The next Ferguson, Missouri, will happen again -- in some other community where the police and the policed are mutually suspicious and wary of one another, writes Plain Dealer columnist Phillip Morris. But it doesn't have to. Former Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich and other community leaders showed there can be another way in the mid-1980s.
(Christian Gooden, St. Louis Post-Dispatch via MCT)

Several days after Ferguson, Missouri, descended into chaos, former Cleveland Mayor George Voinvoich called and left an urgent message.

He wanted to talk about his friend Jack Schron Jr., the Republican nominee for Cuyahoga County executive. But more importantly, he wanted to talk about the difficult, but important, work of building trust between police and communities that are instinctively suspicious of police, namely African-American communities.

Given the disturbing findings of a recent USA Today/Pew Research Center Poll, the call from the former mayor, Ohio governor and U.S. senator could not have been more timely. The poll found that 62 percent of African-Americans have little confidence that police treat blacks and whites equally, while 59 percent of blacks lack confidence that police in their home communities wouldn’t use excessive force against them.

To the contrary, only 28 percent of whites said they believe there is a double standard based on race and only 26 percent said they believe police would use excessive force against them.

In a word: “Dangerous.”

When two-thirds of African-Americans believe that there is a racial double standard in regard to law enforcement – whether it’s true or not – there is a grave problem.

Voinovich intuitively understood this historical police-community powder keg when he became mayor of Cleveland in 1980. He said he looked around his staff and realized that given Cleveland’s history of volatile relations between police and African-Americans, he needed better inside help. He needed to quickly develop social currency, contacts that would help carry him through difficult and dangerous moments of community tension.

“If there is no history of dialogue and positive interaction between police and the communities they police, explosive situations can erupt suddenly when questionable or controversial encounters take place.

“That’s what you see happening in Ferguson right now. When I became mayor of Cleveland, I knew that certain steps needed to be taken immediately to ensure that we had open channels of communication with the African-American community.”

So what did Voinovich do? He created community relations boards in each of the city’s police districts. He launched the Cleveland Roundtable, which he describes as a mini-United Nations, consisting of corporate CEOs and neighborhood people. The Roundtable got people talking and helped launch important community-wide conversations. He also championed residency requirements for city employees.

But most importantly, perhaps, he turned to trusted civil rights leaders, people like Earl Williams and the Rev. Theophilus Caviness, whom Voinovich jokingly likened to the Holy Ghost. Caviness became a highly effective emissary between the mayor’s office and then Council President George Forbes. Together the three men, with plenty of help, orchestrated important dialogues and were able to diffuse some issues before they became toxic.

Caviness recalled Tuesday how being proactive in building trust enabled Cleveland to avoid dangerous civil unrest in the mid-1980s.

“An Arab merchant in Collinwood got into a dispute with a young African-American male and shot through a store window, killing him. Things were extremely tense. The African-American community could have gone up in flames, again," Caviness said.

"But the Voinovich administration had already built up a reservoir of goodwill in both the Arab and the African-American communities. We were able to put leaders from both sides around a table and to talk. It was tough. But in the end, cooler heads prevailed. Our outreach was paying off,” said Caviness, who still serves as pastor emeritus of Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church.

So how does America avoid future conflicts like the one that will continue to play out in Ferguson? How can a greater sense of trust be built not just between African-Americans and police – but between all Americans and police?

It won’t be easy. Continuous bridge building is required. It involves the creation of more diverse and qualified police forces that accurately reflect the citizens they serve. It involves sustained efforts to build and foster respect between police and their host communities. It involves more families and communities teaching young knuckleheads, scofflaws and thugs that the rule of law applies to everyone – not just those who choose to observe it.

“To build trust, you have to have people who know how to throw the ball right down the middle,” Voinovich said, using a baseball analogy.

“The police and administrators cannot be seen to be taking a side. There can be no favorites.

“Anyone with half of a brain should have seen that Ferguson was a dangerous situation waiting to happen. The city’s police department, for whatever reason, was a poor reflection of the town it policed. I wonder how many of the officers on that force lived in Ferguson and actually knew its residents? ”

Civil unrest is best prevented when police and the policed understand that each are indispensable. A better mutual respect is non-negotiable if social conflict is to be avoided.

Unfortunately, we haven't heard the last of Ferguson. America is full of them.

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